PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING TRADITIONAL
CHURCH-STATE DOCTRINE
During the past few years several articles have been published
in The American Ecclesiastical Review and elsewhere in support of
what the authors of these articles and many other Catholics
consider to be the traditional Catholic teaching on the proper
relations between the Catholic Church and civil societies. The
doctrine set forth and defended in these papers is that summed up
in the letter Longinqua oceani, written by Pope Leo XII1 to the
Archbishops and Bishops of the United States, and dated Jan. 6,
1805.
For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government
of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by
the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act
without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to
draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most
desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or
expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.1

In the Longinqua oceani Pope Leo XIII described our American
system of relations between the civil society and religion as one in
which the “rei civilis reique sacrae . . . rationes” are “separated
and dissociated.” This condition is said to be 1) not objectively
the best status for the Church, 2) illicit in some countries and
under some circumstances, and 3) sometimes and in some
countries inexpedient. By clear implication the Longinqua oceani
reminds us that this condition is both licit and expedient as it
stands in the United States.
1 The original Latin text reads as follows. “Hoc enim Ecclesiae apud vos
concessum est, non repugnante temperatione civitatis, ut nullis legum prae­
pedita vinclis, contra vim defensa iure communi iustitiaeque indiciorum,
tutam obtineat vivendi agendique sine offensione facultatem. Sed quamquam
haec vera sunt, tamen error tolendus, ne quis hinc sequi existimet, petendum
ab America exemplum optimi Ecclesiae status: aut universe licere vel expedire,
rei civilis reique sacrae distractas dissociatasque, more americano, rationes.”
This text is found in Codicis iuris canonici fontes, edited by Cardinal Gasparri
(Polyglot Vatican Press, 1933), III, 461 f. The translation is found in The
Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers,
1903), p. 323.

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The men who have written in support of this position have
always maintained that, since this is the authoritative teaching of
a Roman Pontiff, it is something which all Catholics should
accept with a true and sincere internal assent. They are likewise
convinced that there is ample and manifest theological evidence
in support of this position. Unfortunately, however, there are
certain portions of that evidence which they have not had the
opportunity to explain at any length during the course of their
discussions on this subject.
The reason why some sections of the theological background of
their own position have not been brought out at any length
during the course of the contemporary discussions on Church and
state by the theologians who have defended the traditional theses
is to be found in the predominantly polemic function of their
writings. They were almost always engaged in trying to show
that certain propositions presented, on the one hand by enemies
of the Catholic Church, and on the other by theologians whose
views on this subject differed from their own, were not acceptable.
Hence their writings have, in great measure, been geared to
positions other than that which they themselves accepted and
defended. As a result, in the minds of some at least among their
readers, their position has appeared to be more negative than
positive, more a rejection of teachings which they have deemed
unwarranted than a presentation of a definite and positive
teaching consonant with and made imperative by some of the
fundamental truths in the body of Catholic doctrine.
So it was that, in 1946, the article entitled “Time and Pope
Leo”2 centered around a protest against the news magazine
Time's contention that Pope Leo XIII had condemned “the
U.S. principle of separation of Church and State,” and its
assertion that, “Though Leo’s views are still repeated by a few
academic theologians, they are largely ignored by the U.S.
hierarchy.” In this case the inaccuracy of the first claim could be
shown by an appeal to the words of Pope Leo, and the second
assertion is manifestly self-contradictory. The “academic theo­
logians” who, according to Time itself, upheld the great Pontiff’s
teachings are the very men who teach as the Bishops’ repre­
sentatives in the Bishops’ schools.
» AER, 114, 5 (May, 1946), 369-75.

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Later that same year AER carried still another controversial
article on Church and state. It was entitled “The ( atholic
Church and Freedom of Religion,”3 and it commented upon the
inaccurate and misleading use made of Dr. Connell’s brochure,
Freedom of Worship, by the bitterly anti-Catholic Cnristi-αη
Herald and by the religious editors of Time. A paper, "I he
Theology of the Church and of the State,” read to the second
annual meeting of the Catholic 'rheological Society of America in
Boston, and published in the 1946 volume of that Society’s
Proceedings, commented on the pertinent pontifical teachings
during the reigns of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XI II.4
All of the more recent AER articles which hace upheld the
literal accuracy and the authoritative character of the Leonine
teachings on Church and state must be classified as parts of a
debate which has been carried on within the ranks of the Ameri­
can theologians themselves. Within this group we must list Dr.
Connell’s brilliant paper on ‘‘Christ the King of Civil rulers,”5
and his two direct replies to Fr. Murray,6 as well as the two wellknown articles by Dr. Shea,7 and my own attempt to summarize
and to evaluate the first part of the discussion between Dr.
Shea and Fr. Murray. Dr. Martin’s explanation of the nature of
the state, and of the various erroneous theories which have been
offered on this subject belongs similarly to this same field of
discussion.8
Directly pertinent to this same controversy have been the
various papers published in AER on the doctrinal authority of
papal encyclicals and on the nature and the authoritative force of
F 3 AER, 115, 4 (Oct. 1946), 286-301. Dr. Connell’s pamphlet was publisher!
in*1944 by the Paulist Press in New York. It was the reprint of an article in
Columbia, 23, 3 (Dec. 1943), 6 ff. The offending articles appeared in the
Christian Herald, 69, 8 (Aug. 1946), 51, and in Time, 48, 5 (July 29, 1916), 56.
4 Proceedings of The Catholic Theological Society of America, 2 (1946), 15-46.
* AER, 119, 4 (Oct. 1948), 244-53.
6 “The Theory of the ‘Lay State,' ” AER, 125, 1 (July, 1951), 7-18, and
“Reply to Father Murray,” AER, 126, 1 (Jan. 1952), 49-59.
7 “Catholic Doctrine and ‘The Religion of the State,’ ” AER, 123, 3 (Sept.
1950), 161-74, and “Catholic Orientations on Church and State,” AER, 125,
6 (Dec. 1951), 405-16.
8 “The State: Its Elements,” A ER, 125,3 (Sept. 1951), 177-95. :

CHURCH-STATE DOCTRINE

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the Holy Father’s ordinary magisterium.9 Dr. Benard’s critique
of certain aspects of the “Springfield plan,’’ with its magnificent
explanation of the Catholic principles of tolerance, was not writ­
ten with direct reference to this or to any controversy among
Catholic theologians.10 It has, nevertheless, been of immense
value in the course of this discussion.
Neither in the individual nor in the aggregate have these papers
attempted to offer even a sketch of the basic theological principles
upon which the traditional position on the interrelations between
the Catholic Church and civil societies is founded. Yet these are
principles which must be known and understood if this traditional
teaching is to be appreciated for what it is, and recognized as a
genuine and positive theological doctrine, rather than as a mere
point from which attacks on other theories can originate.
The first of these principles is an expression of the nature of
religion itself. It is a statement of the fact that objectively
religion is nothing more or less than the payment of the debt of
acknowledgement which all rational creatures owe to God.
Thus, by its very nature, the work of religion is something
which every rational creature must perform if that creature is
objectively to be morally good. It is a moral evil to withhold
from a fellow creature the good which is really due to him. It is a
much more serious moral evil to fail to pay to God the debt of
acknowledgement actually due to Him because of His supreme
goodness and because of our absolute and entire dependence
upon Him.
The next principle has to do with the extent of the obligation of 7
religion or worship. Since man is totally dependent upon God,
’“The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals," AER, 121, 2, 3 (Aug.,
Sept. 1949), 136-50; 210-20; “The Religious Assent Due to the Teachings of
Papal Encyclicals," AER, 123, 1 (July, 1950), 59-67; “The Lesson of the
Humani Generis,” AER, 123, 5 (Nov. 1950), 359-78; “The Humani Generis
and Its Predecessors,” AER, 123, 6 (Dec. 1950), 452-58; “The Humani
Generis and the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium,” AER, 125, 1 (July,
1951), 53-62; “Christ the Teacher and the Stability of Catholic Dogma,”
AER, 125, 3 (Sept. 1951), 208-19. Also pertinent to the discussion were “The
Relation of the Christian State to the Catholic Church according to the
Pontificale Romanum,” AER, 123, 3 (Sept: 1950), 214-18, and “The Status of a
Controversy,” A ER, 124, 6 (June, 1951), 451-58.
10.4 ER, 114, 1 (Jan. 1946), 1-12.

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there is no realm or section of human life which can be exempted
from this obligation of acknowledging God’s supreme goodness.
Thus, not only individual men, but also all societies or groups of
men are bound to pay that debt of acknowledgement. If they tail
to make that acknowledgement, their conduct is objectively
lacking a good which it should include.
One factor which can and docs obscure this principle in the
minds of some men is a confused and imperfect notion of religion
itself. When they fail to see the virtue of religion for what it
really is, a potential part of justice, they are inclined to look upon
the field of its exercise as in some way circumscribed. They do
not come to realize that the work of religion is, in the last analysis,
the payment of the real debt or obligation of acknowledgement on
the part of the creature of his complete dependence upon God,
and of God’s sovereign excellence. Thus, if they come to imagine
that religion has no more meaning than that contained in the
basic concept of this reality ordinarily set forth in manuals of
comparative religion or history of religion, they will never be able
to appreciate the genuine obligation incumbent upon all indi­
viduals and upon all groups of men to worship God.

Now it is perfectly obvious that under certain circumstances,
some groups, states, families, and other societies, arc not in a
position to perform corporate or social acts of worship. Such a
case occurs, of course, when the membership of the group is
sharply divided in religious belief. Where different members of a
family have different religions, the family as such cannot have
its own act of worship. Likewise, where the various citizens of a
state have different religious persuasions, it is evident that the
state itself is not in a position to exercise its own act of religion,
and to pay its own debt of acknowledgement to God.
In such cases the non-performance of the religious act by the
group or community may well be morally excusable. After all,
the obligation of the society to pay its debt of acknowledgement
or worship is definitely consequent upon the obligations of the
individual human beings that compose the group. But, even
under such circumstances, it is utterly incorrect to say that the
condition of the community or group which does not offer social
worship to God is, in the strictest sense of the term, a good thing.
A state or any other community may not be in a position to pay

CHURCH-STATE DOCTRINE

457

this debt of acknowledgement or religion to God, but that failure
to worship, despite its practical necessity, remains something objectively deplorable.
Hence, even on these grounds, the failure or the inability of a
civil society to concern itself with the acts of religion must not
be considered as a good or desirable thing. The condition of such
a state, even though it be the only one possible under a given set
of circumstances, cannot be thought of as ultimately and com­
pletely fitting or proper for any group or organization of men.
It is never simpliciter a good thing to have any individual or
any group of individuals withhold the payment of the debt of
acknowledgement and gratitude due to the living God.

Still another principle which must be kept in mind for a proper
grasp of the theology of Church and state is the truth that God
wills that the debt of religion should be payed to Him in a definite
and supernatural way. It is His right to prescribe the method
according to which He is to be worshipped, and He has seen fit to
exercise that right. His message, the divine public and super­
natural revelation which comes to us in the Catholic Church,
carries with it manifest signs of its own authenticity.
According to that message, the one acceptable and authorized C
social worship of God is to be found summed up in the Eucharistic
sacrifice of the Catholic Church. It is God's will that men should
pay the debt of acknowledgement and gratitude they owe to
Him in the worship and according to the rite of His own Church.
Hence it follows that religion and the Church are not in the best
or the most desirable position in a land where, even for perfectly
valid and acceptable reasons, the civil society itself does not wor­
ship God according to the rites of the Church. This holds true
even where the Church shows a freedom and vitality greater than
those it manifests in some of the countries where the civil society
has offered the true and Catholic worship to God.

This is precisely the point which Pope Léo XIII brought out so
forcefully in his letter to the hierarchy of the United States. The
great Pontiff never lost sight of the fact that the Catholic Church
is actually the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ Our Lord. It is His
instrument for the sanctification and the enlightenment of the
people for whom He died on the Cross. It judges the world and
its affairs in the light of His standards, not in the light of the

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norms used by the world itself. Hence it cannot and will not
describe some condition as fully desirable in which the benefits
that accrue to it and to its members come precisely from t he in­
ability' of the civil society to worship God in the Church s
Eucharistic sacrifice.
Despite the undoubted fact that the
material and even the spiritual prosperity of the Church were
greater here than in lands where the Catholic religion was recog­
nized and accepted by the civil society, Pope Leo was bound to
insist that the non-recognition of the Church and the nonacceptance of its worship by the state could not enter as factors
into the best and most desirable condit ion of the ( 'atholic Church

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Zeal for God as well as charity for our neighbor and for our
own country stand behind this teaching of Pope Leo’s. It would
seem difficult in the extreme for a person who really loves God
and who wills and works to have His name glorified to consider as
ultimately and absolutely satisfactory a situation in which the
civil society does not pay its debt of religion to Him. The
intention that God’s name be glorified, the intention which we
beg God to fulfill every time we repeat the first petition of the
Lord’s Prayer, involves a desire that the acknowledgement due to
God should actually be given to Him. Obviously the man who
would consider the situation of the Church as ultimately and
absolutely satisfactory in a nation or country which as such docs
not worship God according to the rite of the Catholic Church
does not consider this worship by a civil society or nation as
completely desirable.

Furthermore, the affection which, by God’s command, we owe
to our own fellow-citizens and to our own country itself must
militate against the acceptance of a separation of Church from
state or of religion from the state as ultimately satisfactory. The
love we owe our neighbors is a love of charity, a love of benevo­
lence, through which we will, seriously and sincerely, that these
people may have the benefits of which they stand in need. The
one absolutely necessary goal which God has set for all men is t he
supernatural possession of Himself in the Beatific Vision, a pos­
session which God wills that they should enjoy in the unity of the
Church triumphant in heaven. As the Holy Father has brought
out forcefully and sharply in his encyclical Humani generis, this
eternal salvation is a goal which men can not attain apart from

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459

the Catholic Church itself." When we consider as ultimately and
absolutely satisfactory a situation in which the state, by reason
of the diversity of religious tenets among its own citizens, does
not actually worship God according to the rites of the Catholic
Church, we are thereby branding as ultimately satisfactory a
situation in which great numbers of our own neighbors remain
apart from that Church which is truly requisite for eternal
salvation. Such an attitude is clearly incompatible with the true
charity or love of benevolence according to which we sincerely
will and intend to bring these neighbors of ours, to the extent of
our ability, the good things which are helpful and necessary to
them.
The affection of charity demands that we should rejoice in and
be grateful for the good things which the beneficiaries of our
charity possess. Thus we must thank God for the freedom and
the intellectual and material prosperity of our own nation. That
same affection of charity, however, forbids us to be complacent
about the wants and the ills of those about us. We have no right,
as the members of the household of the faith, to remain satisfied
that many of our own fellow-citizens stay deprived of the fruits of
both the temporal and the internal missions of the Holy Ghost.
That these individuals are not joined to Our Lord by either the
inward or the outward bonds of unity with Him is their mis­
fortune.
Our own beloved nation is not in a position to offer its official
and corporate worship to God according to the rite of the true and
Catholic Church only because of the fact that many of our fellow­
citizens have and profess either a false religion or no religion at all.
Obviously, if we are to think and to speak according to thë
dictates of true faith and charity, we cannot, in any way whatso­
ever, believe that this situation is absolutely the best and ulti­
mately satisfactory for our fellow-Americans, for our country
itself, or for the Church.
Under the definite circumstances in which we live, with the
various religious beliefs and the lack of belief existent among
Americans, it is obviously best that all religions should be treated
11 “Aliqui necessitatem pertinendi ad veram Ecclesiam, ut sempiterna
attingatur salus, ad vanam formulam reducunt” (L'Osservatore Romano, Aug.
21-22, 1950).

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alike according to our American law. After all, we constitute a
nation. The law and the government of a nation are definitely
meant to aid us in our essential civil task of living together peace­
fully and of bringing about our own corporate and individual
temporal welfare. Our laws and government, as they stand, con­
tribute admirably towards the accomplishment of this essential
civil task. They protect the freedom we need and cherish.

The anti-Catholic agitators of our time are obviously plotting
against the very essence of our peaceful life as a nation. Their
reckless and vulgar diatribes against Catholic Americans and (he
Catholic Church as well as their spurious philosophy of freedom
are aimed to incite the non-Catholics of the United States to dis­
like and distrust, and if possible, to persecute, their Catholic
fellow-Americans. It is distinctly to the credit of the majority’ of
American non-Catholics that they instinctively recognize the
seditious nature of this anti-Catholic ranting. They see that, if
the agitators were successful, there would be internal discord and
strife within our nation, and the very purpose of our civil society
would be frustrated.

It would seem that the most serious and damaging effect pro­
duced by these agitators has been within the realm of our Ameri­
can Catholic literature. The anti-Catholic agitators are con­
tinually charging that Catholics are striving to do away with
freedom of religion in the United States. In answering these
men, some of our less skillful apologists become so confused that
they actually give the impression that Catholics are completely
and absolutely satisfied with the situation here in America today,
that we believe it to be best that many of our fellow-citizens
should remain as they are, apart from Our Lord, from His
Church, and from His true religion. Unmindful of the constant
and devoutly sincere prayer of the Church that all of those who
wander apart from ecclesiastical union and fellowship with Christ
should be brought by God’s grace into that fellowship, these
writers describe as ultimately good and satisfactory a situation
in which the nation itself takes no more cognizance of the true
religion than it does of false systems of worship.
It is the divinely infused virtue of charity that dictates the
prayers of the Church that all men may be brought into union
with Christ within the ecclesiastical fellowship. According to the

CHURCH-STATE DOCTRINE

461

order of that charity, our prayers in this direction should be
most intense in favor of those who arc closest to us, our own
fellow-citizens. We would be denying the force of that missionary
charity within the Church, or misjudging the nature of the
Church itself, were we in any way to give the impression that we
do not care whether our fellow-Americans enter the true Church
or not. The true religion is the great good which we desire for
our fellow-citizens and for our country. The true Church, out­
side of which there is no salvation, is likewise a great and neces­
sary good we seek for the men and the nation we love, in the
affection of charity.
There is one more principle which must be taken into consider­
ation for any proper understanding of the traditional Catholic
position on Church-state relations. In the passage from the
Longinqua oceani, quoted on the first page of this article, Pope
Leo XIII taught that “it would be very erroneous to draw the
conclusion . . . that it would be universally lawful or expedient for
State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.”
The clear inference of this passage is that this situation is allow­
able and expedient in America, as the only means by which the
civil society can operate properly in the situation in which Ameri­
cans profess many different religions or none at all. There is,
however, likewise the clear inference that in some cases the non­
profession of the Catholic religion by the civil society was a
definite moral wrong.

The significance of that statement becomes apparent from a
study of the Catholic dogma set forth in the Vatican Council’s
first dogmatic constitution, the Dei Filius. This document de­
clares that. “If anyone should say that the faithful and those who
have never arrived at the only true faith are in a like situation,
so that Catholics can have a legitimate reason for withholding
their assent from and doubting, until they shall have completed
the scientific proof of the credibility and the truth of their own
faith, that faith which they have already received under the
Church’s magisterium, let him be anathema.”12 The text of the
third chapter of this constitution declares that “those who have
received the faith under the Church’s magisterium can never
12 DB, 1815.

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have any legitimate cause for changing that faith or doubting

The active separation of the Church from the state in countries
which previously were Catholic and which had previously, as
civil societies, paid their real debt of religion to God according
to the true worship of the Catholic Church was manifestly the
work of individuals who had ceased to profess the Catholic faith.
It was a part of the mechanics of that changing or rejection of t he
true faith which the Church has always recognized as inherently
an evil thing. In such countries, the condition could be called
neither legitimate nor expedient.
The thesis that the state or the civil society is objectively obli­
gated to worship God according to the rite of the Catholic religion
thus stems basically from a realization of the fact that the debt of
religion is a real obligation incumbent upon every human being
and every social unit, and from a recognition of the truth that
there is only one objectively acceptable religious worship, that
which is paid to God within the framework of Our Lord’s Mysti­
cal Body. This thesis is likewise in line with the fundamental prin­
ciple of Catholic missiology, the truth that God wills that all men
should enter His one true Church. Thus it refuses to see as
genuinely and ultimately desirable and good a situation in which
some men, even though through no fault of their own, are not
citizens of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth.
Joseph Clifford Fenton

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.
13 DB, 1794.

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Answers to Questions
AN ASSISTANT PRIEST AT A GOLDEN JUBILEE
Question: Is it permitted to have an assistant priest at the
golden jubilee mass of the priest? Recently' I have seen the
assistant priest wearing a stole which I feel is incorrect. What is
the correct dress for an assistant priest?

Answer: The Code of Canon Law is very clear on the question
of an assistant priest. It clearly states that Bishops and other
Prelates entitled to the use of the Pontificals (crosier and miter)
may have an assistant priest when celebrating Holy Mass. The
Congregation of Rites permits an assistant priest for the first
Solemn Mass of a newly ordained priest. (S.R.C. No. 3564,2).
The occasion of a silver or golden jubilee does not warrant the
presence of an assistant priest, for the Code says it is not lawful
“to have an assistant priest merely for the sake of honour or
solemnity.”
Should the presence of an assistant priest be justified the
proper dress for him is the surplice over which he wears the
amice and cope which will correspond in color to the vestments of
the day. Wearing the stole is entirely incorrect.
PATRONAL FEAST DAY
Question: A nun has asked me when she should celebrate her
feast day, St. Bernadette, Feb. 18 or April 16. May we be
enlightened?

Answer: Our good nun can make her own selection for her
patron unless one or the other was specifically designated when
she received the name of Bernadette.

VOTIVE MASSES

Question: Where does one find the votive Masses for the
Nativity of Our Lord and for the Mystery of the Resurrection?
Answer: The Masses of the greater feasts of Our Lord like
Christmas and Easter may never be said as votive Masses. As
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